The Icarus Show Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1: Coming Soon

  Chapter 2: Maisie

  Chapter 3: Who Else?

  Chapter 4: Icarus

  Chapter 5: Reactors and Non-Reactors

  Chapter 6: Do Nothing

  Chapter 7: November 2

  Chapter 8: Can You Believe It?

  Chapter 9: Marbles

  Chapter 10: Alex in Wonderland

  Chapter 11: Stay-in-Bed-ows

  Chapter 12: Invisible

  Chapter 13: Wings

  Chapter 14: Donald

  Chapter 15: Personal

  Chapter 16: Construction Work

  Chapter 17: Changes

  Chapter 18: Meeting of Minds

  Chapter 19: The Mountain

  Chapter 20: Sheds

  Chapter 21: Halloween

  Chapter 22: Last Day

  Chapter 23: Irony

  Chapter 24: Isaac Newton

  Chapter 25: Maisie and Donald

  Chapter 26: The Bridge

  Chapter 27: The Fall of Icarus

  Chapter 28: Meadows and Marsh

  Chapter 29: Guess Who

  Copyright

  I was on the school bus, going home, when I found it. I opened my bag to get out my book, and spotted it straightaway. Someone had put it there, tucked it inside the secret pocket where I keep my spare pen and my money for lunch. There’d been 20p change that day. As I searched for my book, I did a quick check: still there. My fingers touched it as they felt for the coin.

  All the way home I kept my book open and turned a page now and then. But I wasn’t really reading. I was congratulating myself on my outstanding self-control. Don’t React. That was my new Lambourn motto. Don’t miss a beat.

  I’d gotten the idea from Shadow, I think, who was definitely the expert. If you put Shadow outside when she’d been on the sofa, she never tried to run back in. She’d just sit down and wash herself, then saunter away. She made you believe it was what she’d always wanted.

  The opposite was what David Marsh had done on the first day of term. Alan Tydman had stuck out a foot to trip him up. He did it to everyone—but David Marsh had turned round and come back. Come right back to Alan and said, “Was that you?” Big mistake. Now we all called him David Bog (which means toilet in case you didn’t know) and he must have wished he’d just laughed and carried on, like a normal person.

  I am a normal person. No one will ever call me a toilet. I’m constantly on my guard to protect my status. It’s hard work because you can be put to the test any time: scooped up and shoved out into the garden if you’re a cat; tripped up and shoved in the ribs by Alan Tydman if you’re a person in our year at Lambourn Secondary School.

  Or have a sealed brown envelope put in your bag.

  Don’t React. Don’t miss a beat.

  When the bus reached my stop, I closed my book. No one would notice my bookmark hadn’t moved because no one was sitting beside me. Good. But Bogsy was already getting off. Bad. If he got off first, I had to hang back to make sure I didn’t get off with him—since it was only us two at this stop. Once, I had waited too long and missed my chance to get off altogether. Everybody had laughed and I’d nearly panicked. But then I’d laughed, too, at myself—made a funny “Stupid Me” face and saved the situation. I’d had to get off at the next stop and walk an extra half a mile home, but that didn’t matter.

  Today I just had to dawdle a bit to put distance between Bogsy and me. I got home safely, and went straight down the garden to Don’s shed.

  You need to understand about Don’s shed. It’s important, so I’ll tell you: It’s not really Don’s shed, it’s ours. Don’s dead. He was old and he died and Maisie went into a Home. There. Now you know. Even though Maisie and Don had been our next-door neighbors—the houses are joined—we sold ours and bought theirs and moved in. We did it because of their garden, which is bigger than our old one. Mum and Dad fancied growing their own vegetables, just like Don.

  Anyway, Don’s shed is nice. It’s old and it’s full of Don’s stuff, which I like. Mum and Dad’s stuff still stands in one corner, as if it’s dropped by but hasn’t been asked to sit down.

  I sat down now—on an old wooden box—and opened my bag.

  The strange thing about the envelope was it didn’t have my name on. It didn’t have anyone’s name on. It was blank. Envelopes from teachers say, “To the parents of Alex Meadows”—and anyway, you get given them, they don’t just turn up in your bag. Invitations to people’s parties get put in your bag—Timmy still gets them—but people don’t have that kind of party in my year anymore. I think they go to the movies with just one or two good friends. I’m not really sure.

  Anyway, this envelope was mysterious—sinister, even. I was glad I’d handled the situation so well and was able to open it alone. I unsealed the flap and took out a slip of paper. A feather came out of the envelope, too, and fell to the floor. Those were the only two things. The feather was gray and looked like a pigeon’s. The paper was white, with computer writing on it. But the writing didn’t make sense. “Coming soon!” it said. “A boy is going to fly! Do you believe it? Can you believe it?? Will you be there???”

  I quickly glanced up at the cobwebby window of Don’s shed. Autumn sunshine filtered through dust. A largish spider in one corner. But nobody watching. No one (not counting the spider) there.

  In a way, it was like an invitation. Invitations used to end with things like “Hope to see you there!” But invitations said where “there” was—and also when—and who was asking. There was so much missing from this—it made me nervous. Somebody had a plan and I was in it but they weren’t giving out the details and so I was at a disadvantage.

  And what kind of plan was it, anyway? Crazy! A boy is going to fly? How? Like a bird? That’s what the feather suggested, but that was mad. Or was this boy going to fly in a plane? Go on a vacation and I was to see him off? That made hardly more sense than the bird. What was the big deal in that? There seemed no explanation between the boring and the totally unbelievable.

  But maybe unbelievable was the point. I was being dared to believe. Someone was challenging me to react, watching to see what I’d do. I looked again toward the window. This time I noticed a fly had been caught at one edge of the spider’s web. The spider was spidering over to take a look. Maybe finish it off.

  I felt horribly trapped. This whole thing was a trap. Did I believe that a boy was going to fly? What if I did? Would somebody laugh? And what if I didn’t? Didn’t—or couldn’t. Would somebody call me useless?

  My stomach felt so tight it ached. Flying boys: I didn’t want to know. But here was this envelope, forcing the question. Could I believe it? Would I believe it? I squirmed on my seat. Was I supposed to believe it?

  Well, was I? What was the right thing to do?

  Looking back on what happened, I have an idea that life’s like a slot machine. That’s a simile. You get good marks for those, only Mr. Smith says they’re like chocolate éclairs: however good they are, it is possible to have too many.

  What I mean by the slot machine is that life’s full of zillions of different combinations of things, some good, some bad, all spinning round all the time. And you think you can control which combination you end up with, but you can’t. If I could have pulled a lever in Year 6 to keep things as they were, I would have: Maisie and Don our next-door neighbors; me in top year of primary school, with a really great best friend as well, and a cat. That would certainly count as a line of cherries in the slot machine display, but could I hold on to it? All I’ve got left from that lineup is Shadow.

  Actually, maybe there’s one other thing. Maybe. But I’d better not include it because you shouldn’t count your chickens befor
e they’ve hatched. That’s a cliché, and Mr. Smith says they’re always bad.

  The day I heard Phil was moving away, I ran round to Maisie and Don’s. Maisie was in the kitchen, making strawberry jam in her huge copper pan. As soon as I came in, she splopped some jam into a saucer for me to dip my finger in. But not for the reason you’d think. (That was Maisie all over.)

  “Tell me,” she said, “does that wrinkle when you push it?”

  “Maisie,” I said, “I’ve got terrible news! Phil’s family are moving!”

  “Sh!” she said. “Don’s asleep in the front room, having his after-lunch nap.”

  “Phil’s family are moving!” I said again, this time in a whisper.

  “Phil? Your—friend?” said Maisie. “Oh. Now, have you tested that drop in the saucer? Push your finger through and tell me what happens.”

  What happened was the path my finger made through the jam was immediately covered over again as if it had never been there.

  “Nothing happens,” I said. “It’s too runny. It just flows back. Phil—”

  “Then it’s not nearly ready,” she said, and went on stirring.

  There was a pause. The jam smelled delicious. “D’you need this bit, for the saucepan?” I ventured. “Or could I … ?”

  She looked so angry, I thought I’d been wrong to drop the hint.

  But “Saucepan?” she burst out. “Saucepan? This was my mother’s preserving pan! Now.”

  She always said Now like that when she’d dealt with a subject once and for all. There was nothing more to be said about her mum’s pan—but I cautiously sucked my finger. When I looked up, she was watching me.

  “Nice?” she said.

  “Mm.”

  You see, I knew Maisie so well. People even assumed she was my gran. For instance, Phil did. The first time he came round my house, I took him over to Maisie and Don’s, to meet them, and afterward he asked me, “Why do you call them Maisie and Don? It’s weird.”

  “It isn’t,” I said, surprised. “Maisie and Don are their names.”

  “I mean,” said Phil, “why not call them Gran and Grandad, or Granny and Grandpa?”

  When I explained that they weren’t my grandparents, just neighbors I’d had all my life, he seemed to relax.

  “I don’t like her—Maisie,” he said. “And I don’t like that thing round her neck.”

  I wasn’t surprised by either statement. The “thing round her neck” was a necklace, which I’ll talk about later. And Maisie herself, it was true, had been very abrupt with him, even for her. I knew she didn’t like him (so the feeling was mutual) but I didn’t know why. I didn’t tell Phil, of course, but I never took him back there. All Maisie knew from then on was what I told her: the things we got up to at school.

  “Phil,” she said now, as she stirred the jam. “Wasn’t it Phil who dared you to wee on the classroom floor?”

  It was. Phil always livened things up. He was great.

  “And when you did, wasn’t it Phil who went and told the teacher?”

  “Yes, but that was ages ago, back in Year 1 or Year 2. He wouldn’t do that now … ”

  “I should hope not!” said Maisie.

  “Anyway, what does it matter?” I remembered why I was upset. “He’s moving to Scotland. I may never see him again!”

  And Maisie said, “Well, there are plenty more fish in the sea.”

  I knew she didn’t like him. I shouldn’t have expected sympathy from her. But she needn’t have made it so obvious. I felt offended.

  “That’s a cliché,” I said rudely (not caring if she knew the word or not).

  “It’s a fact,” she said. “Now.” (And I never found out if she did.)

  Maisie’s theory was that secondary school would be a fresh start. I’d meet loads of new people, she said, and sooner or later I’d find someone on my wavelength (her words).

  “Somebody good enough. Somebody you can rely on.”

  Apart from what this implied about Phil, it implied that at secondary school I’d be able to pick up where I’d left off. I’d find a new best friend and carry on just as before, as if nothing had happened. Everything would be the same. Only better.

  But it wasn’t.

  Bad things happened that summer. Hardly had the jam cooled in its jars than Don died. And after that, Maisie went funny. Not that you’d know to talk to her, but apparently she could no longer go on living safely at home. Almost at once, she went into a Home, which sounds similar but is completely different. For a start, you can’t make jam in a Home. Maisie had loved making jam—and chutney—and talking to people in her kitchen, as she peeled the potatoes.

  People like me.

  So, when I started at Lambourn Secondary, everything had changed. And I hadn’t been there a week before I realized I’d better change, too.

  If you opened a door when Shadow was walking past, she’d just keep walking. She was great. You knew she knew the door was open and that (being a cat) she really wanted to go through. She would in the end, if you left it open, but at least to begin with she’d done that thing of choosing not to.

  It was Friday when I’d brought the terrible envelope home from school. For the rest of the day I did nothing, told no one, about it. I could have shown it to Mum or Dad, or Timmy, but I didn’t. Trust No One. That was another new saying of mine.

  Not that I couldn’t trust my family. Well, I couldn’t entirely trust Timmy. But Timmy couldn’t have written the note because it had come from school. Besides, he doesn’t use the spell check and he’d never have gotten the “i” and the “e” the right way round in “believe.”

  But by the next day, I had to tell someone. Before, I’d have gone round to Maisie and Don. And—well, I know it sounds funny, but I had discovered I still (half) could. I’d taken to getting the bus into town every Saturday morning, you see, to visit Maisie in The Laurels. And it was no ordinary visit. Talking to Maisie in The Laurels was like stepping into a different world.

  The thing was, Maisie had managed to do what I’d failed to do in Year 6. She’d pulled the lever of the slot machine and gotten a line of cherries! She’d engineered herself a world that, in many ways, seemed normal, but was actually not the same as everyone else’s. For example, on Planet Maisie, Don was alive.

  And so she lived happily there, and for an hour every Saturday morning—so did I. Now I was at Lambourn, any escape from the real world was good.

  Maisie and I would talk about home, and what was growing in the garden. Maisie had good ideas about things and was still as decided as ever in her opinions. She would ask how the apples were doing—or the beans—or potatoes—and if Shadow was keeping down the mice. I was careful not to ask how much she knew beyond that: where she thought she was now—and why—and what had happened. Someone less tactful might have asked, but not me. I stuck to neutral questions or asked her advice about history homework. Today, of course, I could hardly wait to tell her about the mysterious note, but I thought I should work around to it gently. So, once she had shut the door of her room and turned the TV off and gotten me a cookie, I just said ever so casually, “Can you read?”

  It was a miscalculation.

  “Can I read?” she exploded. “I’m not that old! I didn’t spend my childhood selling matches! I went to school and learned things, same as you! Now.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “it’s just that you seem to like TV.”

  “And how do I know what’s on, eh? Had you thought of that?”

  I didn’t say, but it seemed to me that what was on didn’t really matter to Maisie. Since she’d come to The Laurels, the TV was pumping stuff out pretty much all the time; she watched whatever. But, “You read the listings?” I said, which was the right answer because she said, “Hmph,” and gave me a stare.

  “I’ve had a note from school,” I went on.

  “In trouble, are you?” she said.

  “No. Well, maybe. But it’s not a note from a teacher. I don’t know who it’s from.” />
  I got it out, now a bit scrumpled, and she asked me to hand it over. “Pass me my specs, too, will you?” Another hard stare. “My reading glasses.”

  She studied the note.

  “Anonymous, eh?”

  I knew what anonymous meant, but was ever so slightly surprised that she did. To hide my surprise, I said quickly, “I think it’s some kind of invitation.”

  “I don’t,” said Maisie. “Invitations are personal. This hasn’t got your name on. Did it come in an envelope? Did that have your name on?”

  “No. Yes. I mean, it did come in an envelope, but the envelope was”—I wanted another word like her “anonymous,” but different, to show I was keeping up. “The envelope was—impersonal,” I finished. “You know, blank.” I hurried on. “But I know it was meant for me because somebody put it in my bag.”

  “I think it’s an advert,” said Maisie. “ ‘Coming soon!’ That sounds like a show. Did all your friends get one as well?”

  “I don’t know. I only found it when I got home from school yesterday,” I lied. “I haven’t had a chance to talk with the others.”

  “Well, what about him next door? The one who moved in?”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  Did I mention that when we bought Maisie and Don’s house, the Marshes bought ours? It was really unlucky. They had nothing to do with us and were completely new to the area; they could have chosen anyone’s house. The fact they chose ours meant I had to work extra hard to have nothing to do with Bogsy.

  Maisie looked at me sharply, then looked away. “That’s a pity,” she said. She fingered her necklace.

  She always wore her necklace, a disk on a chain. The chain was thin, but must have been strong, since the disk was quite big. When Maisie folded her fingers around it, she could only just enclose it in her hand.

  When I was little, I’d wanted to touch it, enclose it in mine. Its surface was heaped with yellowy-white things and fragments of shiny metal all bound together in a circular pattern by layers of black thread. It was intricate and unusual: far too fine to be factory-made.

  “I like your necklace,” I’d said one day, and she’d jumped down my throat.